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Scientists Fuse Skin Cell With Embryo Stem Cell

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 August 2005, 09:00 CDT

Scientists fuse skin cell with embryo stem cell

LOS ANGELES, Aug 22 (Xinhua)-- By fusing human skin cell and embryonic stem cell, US scientists reported on Monday they have created a new hybrid cell capable of differentiating into all organ cells.

In the future, this new technology may be used to produce embryonic stem cell lines that are tailored to individual patients without the need to create and destroy human embryos, said researchers Chad Cowan and Kevin Eggan from the Harvard Medical School.

Doctors hope to someday use embryonic stem cells as a source of perfectly matched transplants to treat diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and some injuries. Biologists want to study them to understand the basic causes of disease and development.

But because some people, including US President George W. Bush, object to the destruction of or experimentation on a human embryo, US law restricts the use of federal funds for this kind of research.

The novel approach may help treat patients without the controversy around human embryonic stem cell, but this can be achieved only after the researchers solve a technical puzzle, noted Cowan.

In a paper to appear in this week's online issue of the journal Science, the researchers said they used polyethylene glycol to fuse human embryonic stem cell with human fibroblast, a kind of skin cell.

The hybrid cells had the appearance, growth rate, and several key genetic characteristics of human embryonic cells. They also behaved like embryonic cells, differentiating into cells from each of the three main tissue types that form in a developing embryo.

The researchers concluded that human embryonic stem cells have the capacity to "reprogram" adult somatic cell chromosomes after cell fusion.

The hybrid cells "may therefore provide a useful complement to human oocytes for biochemical and genetic studies aimed at understanding how to reprogram differentiated cells to an embryonic state and thereby increase their developmental potential," said the researchers

"Eventually, this approach might lead to an alternative route for creating genetically tailored human embryonic stem cell lines for use in the study and treatment of human disease," they said.

However, a substantial technical barrier remains before the hybrid cells could be used for therapeutic purposes, said the researchers.

Containing gene sets from both the skin cell and the stem cell, the newly-created hybrid cell has 92 chromosomes, 2 times as a normal stem cell. Before this hybrid cell can be used to cure a patient-- the skin cell provider, researchers must find means to get rid of those genes from the stem cell.

The challenge is "specifically, the elimination of the embryonic cell chromosomes either before or after cell fusion," said the researchers.

"If human embryonic cell enucleation can be performed without the loss of reprogramming activity, and/or if these fusion studies lead to an understanding of the factors needed for reprogramming, these approaches may circumvent some of the logistical and societal concerns surrounding somatic-cell nuclear transfer into human oocytes," they said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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